Clay Buchholz has been one of the two best starters in the AL so far this year.
I can't say that I thought I'd be typing that when I started writing this blog, but there it is, and its true. After his complete game shutout of the Orioles tonight, Buchholz is now tied with David Price for wins (at 8) and trails only Price in ERA for AL starters (to be fair, I definitely didn't think the Price/Buchholz combo would be leading the AL pitching!). Clay's strikes/pitches ratio tonight was 0.643, which correlates nicely with the 5 hitter he threw.
At the plate, the Red Sox offense continues to hum along at a pace that is certainly surprising me, and probably alot of other people too, especially when you consider how much time they've played with Cameron + Ellsbury on the DL. I shudder when I see a box score that has Bill Hall playing center, but when your starter is as effective as Buchholz was tonight, who's playing where doesn't matter nearly as much as it did earlier in the season when the starters were getting regularly lit up, and guys like Hall were being asked to actually play defense on a regular basis.
This was a good start to the weekend series, a series that the Red Sox should really sweep, and keep putting some early-season pressure on the leaders in the division (would also be nice if Toronto started to fall off the pace a bit, I've been very surprised that they've sustained their winning ways this far into the season).
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